Page 374 - A Little Life: A Novel

a pack of hyenas, and every day they chased him, and every day he spent all
his energy running from them, trying to escape being devoured by their
snapping, foaming jaws. All the things that had helped in the past—the

concentrating; the cutting—weren’t helping now. He cut himself more and
more, but the memories wouldn’t disappear. Every morning he swam, and
every night he swam again, for miles, until he had energy enough only to
shower and climb into bed. As he swam, he chanted to himself: he
conjugated Latin verbs, he recited proofs, he quoted back to himself
decisions that he had studied in law school. His mind was his, he told
himself. He would control this; he wouldn’t be controlled.

“I have an idea,” Willem said at the end of another meal in which he had
failed to say much of anything. He had responded a second or two too late
to everything Willem had said, and after a while, they were both quiet. “We
should take a vacation together. We should go on that trip to Morocco we
were supposed to take two years ago. We can do it as soon as I get back.
What do you think, Jude? It’ll be fall, then—it’ll be beautiful.” It was late

June: nine months after the incident. Willem was leaving again at the
beginning of August for a shoot in Sri Lanka; he wouldn’t be back until the
beginning of October.
As Willem spoke, he was thinking of how Caleb had called him
deformed, and only Willem’s silence had reminded him it was his turn to
respond. “Sure, Willem,” he said. “That sounds great.”
The restaurant was in the Flatiron District, and after they paid, they

walked for a while, neither of them saying anything, when suddenly, he saw
Caleb coming toward them, and in his panic, he grabbed Willem and
yanked him into the doorway of a building, startling them both with his
strength and swiftness.
“Jude,” Willem said, alarmed, “what are you doing?”
“Don’t say anything,” he whispered to Willem. “Just stay here and don’t

turn around,” and Willem did, facing the door with him.
He counted the seconds until he was certain Caleb must have passed, and
then looked cautiously out toward the sidewalk and saw that it hadn’t been
Caleb at all, just another tall, dark-haired man, but not Caleb, and he had
exhaled, feeling defeated and stupid and relieved all at once. He noticed
then that he still had Willem’s shirt bunched in his hand, and he released it.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, Willem.”